


When Did We Start the End?

by the_genderman



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Love Confessions, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sad Ending, old steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 22:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20682626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_genderman/pseuds/the_genderman
Summary: Ever since Steve came back from returning the stones, things have been tense. Everything comes to a head when he shows up unexpectedly at Bucky’s door.





	When Did We Start the End?

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know EG Old Steve was OOC compared to every other canon movie (and the comics), but I’m feeling angsty and needed to get this out. Heed the tags, it’s gonna hurt and it’s not gonna get better. Title is from the Phoenix song “Love Like a Sunset.”

Bucky’s tired and hungry when he gets home, barely registering the people passing on the street as he reaches his building. He thumbs the passcode to let him in the front door and trudges up the stairs, thinking about what he’s gonna do for dinner. Probably just get a pizza delivered. It’s quicker than cooking from scratch, and he’s been too busy to meal prep this past week. His therapist says it’s ok if he doesn’t have everything nailed down and planned out to the second, that’s a very human thing to do. Enjoy your rest days, you’re allowed. He’s fishing his keys out of his pocket, thinking about what toppings he wants on his pizza when he sees a familiar face in the hall waiting at his door.

He stops, briefly considering making a run for it but Steve’s seen him already. He plasters a fake smile on his face and continues up.

“Hey, Buck, haven’t seen you in a while. If I didn’t know how busy work can get, I’d almost say you’d been avoiding me,” Steve laughs, his voice brittle as old newspaper. He steps aside to let Bucky unlock his door.

“Yeah, that and therapy. I love Wakanda, but the time zone difference really hits home when I’m skyping my therapist,” Bucky laughs back. He hopes Steve can’t tell how much he’s trying to hide with that laugh. “What brings you to my humble abode? Come in?”

“Thank you,” Steve nods, following Bucky inside. He takes a seat on the couch as Bucky locks up and starts putting his things away.

“Well,” Steve begins, leaning over a little to watch Bucky as he moves around the kitchen, “I haven’t seen you in a while. I wanted to stop by, ask how you’ve been.”

Bucky shrugs and makes an indeterminate noise, back to Steve. “I’ve been as good as can be expected, all things considered.” The little urge to tell Steve exactly what’s been bothering him is starting to bubble to the surface. He grabs a glass, tucks it into the little nook in the fridge, and gets himself a glass of ice water, focusing on the clink of the ice cubes instead of all the things he _could_ say.

“Would you like any help in there?” Steve asks. “I’m not too bad of a cook anymore--”

“No thanks,” Bucky says brusquely, cutting him off. “I was just gonna order pizza. Long day.”

“Oh, alright,” Steve says, sounding slightly bemused. 

Bucky keeps his back to Steve, poking through the menus magneted to his fridge until he decides whose pizza he wants. He makes the call, dragging it out just to the edge of politeness, then sighs to himself and turns to go back to his living room. He sits down on the couch, pointedly not choosing the cushion right next to Steve.

“Is this a bad time? I can come back later, if there’s a day you think would be better,” Steve says slowly, his words less confident than before.

Bucky’s definitely hangry now. He didn’t want to see Steve yet, the wound still far too fresh. He crunches an ice cube and debates how badly he wants to ruin everything. Not that it hasn’t been ruined already, Steve’s just been too dense to realize, he thinks uncharitably.

“It’s never gonna be a _good_ time,” Bucky shrugs, letting the door to the dark place where he’d hidden all his spite and despair open up a crack. “Maybe we should’ve talked about this _before_ you just up and did it.”

“We talked…” Steve says, brows furrowing.

“No we didn’t,” Bucky says sharply. “You said you had to make things right with Peggy. That was not a discussion, you’d already made up your mind. Don’t tell me I couldn’t possibly have known that, Steve, I recognized your stubborn streak and knew, somewhere in me, that you weren’t coming back.”

“But I _did_ come back,” Steve argues weakly.

“No you didn’t,” Bucky tells him, cutting him off again. He doesn’t want to hear excuses. “You lived a whole life without me, without Sam, without any of your ‘_friends_,’ if you can even call us that. You didn’t ‘come back,’ you lived eighty goddamn years without us and then decided to waltz back like nothing had happened. You didn’t see how scared Sam was when he thought something had gone wrong, that you’d gotten stuck somewhere. He was yelling at Bruce to get you back. He lost you again before he’d even had time to start processing _coming back from the dead_. Have you even talked to him since handing off the shield?”

“Yeah, of course we’ve talked,” Steve says, like that should be obvious. “He’s had some questions about the shield, trying to get the angles and throws right, asking for any tips I’ve got.”

“And that’s all you’ve talked about? The shield?” Bucky nudges. “He doesn’t seem different to you, more distant, maybe?”

“Everyone seems different,” Steve says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Half the world was gone for five years, things changed, people changed.”

“Yeah. They did.” Bucky leans back, pressing his head into the back of the couch like it’ll make all of his problems disappear. The pizza can’t come quickly enough. “It kinda feels like I don’t know you anymore. You’re not the same man I knew before I died, and I’m not just talking about the eighty years you lived without me. You’d changed long before you left.”

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says quietly, unsurely, “but you don’t know what it was like. Everything I saw, everything I lived through. In those five years, I kept running through everything I hadn’t done, everything I could’ve done, everything I should’ve done.”

“And what you should’ve done was go back in time and marry Peggy? Do you not hear yourself?” Bucky can’t hide his irritation anymore, and he doesn’t care how Steve feels about it. “Do you not hear how insane that sounds?”

“Come on Buck, Peggy and I loved each other. If I hadn’t gone down with the _Valkyrie_, we’d’ve been married already,” Steve huffs back.

“But you did, and you weren’t,” Bucky shoots back. “I saw the film at the Smithsonian. She had a life without you, and you had a life without her. That was ages ago. You knew that and you went back anyway.”

“I just wanted everything to stop hurting,” Steve says, like he doesn’t quite believe his own reasoning. “And it did. We had a good life together, Peggy and me.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. There’s a lot of things he’d like to bring up, mostly HYDRA-related, but if he starts into them, he’s afraid he won’t be able to stop and he doesn’t want to keep going so long he risks taking out his anger on the pizza guy. “So, what, you got it into your head that going back to Peggy was going to be a reset button or something and nobody stopped you and said what a terrible idea that was?”

“You don’t know--”

“I don’t know _what_. Tell me Steve, tell me what I don’t know,” Bucky’s almost yelling now, leaning forward and gesturing angrily as he lets it all spill out. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose everyone? I don’t know what it’s like to be afraid I’m starting to forget everything I once knew? I don’t know what it’s like to _hurt_? Do you know what hurts? Falling in love with your friend and never being allowed to tell him in so many words hurts. Watching him chase after girls hurts. Watching him fall in love with someone who isn’t you hurts. Being erased year after year after goddamn year hurts. Seeing your best friend beaten and bloodied and knowing _you did it to him_ hurts. Feeling your body start tearing itself apart, cell by cell, _knowing_ you can’t hold yourself together for much longer, knowing you’re gonna die--for real this time--but trying your damndest anyway just so you can see him _one last time_ hurts. Know what _else_ I know? The Steve Rogers I fell in love with wouldn’t run away from doing the right thing just because it _hurt_.”

“You never told me…” Steve says, trailing off. His face is a mess of emotions, sadness, surprise, shame.

“It was written all over me, in every smile, on every part of my body,” Bucky says tiredly, emotionally drained by his outburst. He sinks back into the couch, feeling very small. “‘Til the end of the line.’ That’s a damn marriage vow. Even though I knew I couldn’t have you like that, just being friends was enough for me. You always had my back until you didn’t, and then I knew _friendship_ wasn’t enough for you. Get out of my house, Steve. Some of us still have a life left to live.”

Steve stands up slowly. Bucky doesn’t look at him. Steve shuffles silently to the door. Bucky can feel Steve’s eyes on him, but he won’t look. The door squeaks as it opens, clicking softly as it closes. Bucky waits until he hears the latchbolt catch before he breaks down, his whole body shaking as he cries, mourning everything he lost and everything that was taken from him.


End file.
